I've got a better title for Episode III:
by
JoeLinux
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
"Episode III: The last chance for Lucas".
Seriously...is anyone going into this thing with high hopes? Episode I was like watching my childhood melt into easily-marketable claptrap, and Episode II felt like the actors had full-body botox.
Who is going to see this expecting a wonderful, rounded, well-acted movie? Don't get me wrong, I intend to see it, but mostly because of morbid curiosity.
I dunno...I guess I'm still bitter about LucasArts cancelling Sam and Max for more Star Wars Title. Damn them!
Re:I've got a better title for Episode III:
by
fr2asbury
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Oh, I don't think I ever go to a Star Wars movie for a "well-acted" movie, even the original ones. But from what I've seen the eye candy in this up coming one looks like it'll succesfully make me go "Ooo" and that's the extent of my hopes and expectations. I think I will be pleased.
Re:I've got a better title for Episode III:
by
Couzin2000
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Well-acted? Ok, well I guess Mark Hamill got all these great acting jobs after Episode IV because of his amazing talent.
Not to say anything, but this has always been the problem with me vs all Star Wars fans. The thing is, when you guys saw it in 77, you were "hypnotized" by it because it was all new. But all in all, it's Spider-Man with a laser sword. (Trust me, I'm not trying to diss Star Wars, I'm a huge fan myself)
I just think the thing was so overblown back then that people now have made it their own movie. But this is Lucas' movie. You either like it or you don't but this is his creation. You couldn't very well show up at his doorstep and tell George Lucas "I think the 3rd episode Luke Skywalker needs to be back as a dark Jedi". That's something that would never work for George, and he would never do it.
This movie has gotten to the point of fanatism by so many, and look at what happens when fans become fanatics: Dimebag Darrell from Damageplan/Pantera died for what again? Yes, that's right -- for a FAN. An unstable, crazed-out, Pantera fanatic.
People write stuff on the internet as though they are throwing their own thoughts straight out onto a diary, but others read it and then it becomes this HUGE thing. "Morbid curiosity"... does that mean Jar-Jar Binks killed your Star Wars dream of seeing Han Solo naked in the forest? Are you mad at George Lucas? I think you should call him.
See how stupid this sounds? I'm a fan, not a fanatic. I know LOTS of trivia about Star wars, but I take what Lucas gives me, and deal with it. So why can't the rest of geek nation?
Re:I've got a better title for Episode III:
by
sdo1
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Episode I was like watching my childhood melt into easily-marketable claptrap
You know, I've felt the same way about Episode I. I hated it.
But then this past week I had a revelation. In the years since it was relesed, I had a kid. He's about four and a half years old now. We've watched the first (original) three together (including pausing at the Guido scene to explain that Han shot first), and he's loved them.
Then we watched Episide I last week. And while I was sitting there squirming and re-living the pain, he was REALLY loving it. Jar Jar... "He's funny!". He cracked up at the pod race announcers. Anikin accidentally destroying the space station was met with "That was AWESOME!".
Episide I was not for me. It was designed to satisfy the intellect of a four year old. Well, "designed to" may be to strong, but that's where it succeeded, whether that was the intention or not. Everying I loathed about it, he loved. It's sad that Lucas smashed my dreams of a satisfying first chapter, but my four year old thinks differently.
-S
-- ---
What parts of "shall make no law", "shall not be infringed", and "shall not be violated" don't you understand?
Re:I've got a better title for Episode III:
by
Anonymous Coward
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Actually, it IS Lucas' fault. When he made the original trilogy, his ego was much smaller and he allowed others to refine his creative "vision", and even contribute their own ideas. Now his ego is bigger and the new trilogy is exactly what the old trilogy would have been if not for the influence of others.
I used to think Lucas was engaging in revisionist history when he said "I never wanted Han to shoot first. That was never part of my original vision." Now, I'm pretty sure he's right. The reason Han shot first was probably because someone else decided he should.
After all, Lucas didn't even want Obi Wan to die until his wife told him his villains were cartoonish and nonthreatening unless they killed a good guy. Now cartoonish is all we get.
Re:I've got a better title for Episode III:
by
happyhippy
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
There is only ONE Matrix movie. Got it?
Aint it incorrect..
by
Turn-X+Alphonse
·
· Score: 5, Insightful
Personally after the HHGG (Zaphod's second head is up his nose) and Zeta Gundam (A real Gundam is being made for a movie! Here's some pictures which are infact a 1/2 scale Gundam model been around for 10 years!), incidents. I think I'll hold off on any "leaked" or "hot new news" untill it's been comfirmed by a source I trust.
The movies are what created the franchise in the first place, and Lucas can take the movies _AND_ the franchise in whatever direction he wants.
I think what you mean is that the first two episodes are a disgrace to _YOUR_ impression of what Star Wars is supposed to be. But this isn't your movie, it's Lucas's. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
lowered expectations
by
t1nman33
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Saw these pics this morning...they look good.
Which pretty much sums up my expectations: it looks neat from the previews, and probably will disappoint me in the end. I was in line at Blockbuster with my girlfriend the other night, looking at recent releases, and noting how many of them had excellent trailers, and how many of them actually turned out to be worth watching. Almost anything looks good when your interaction with it consists of a trailer, some stills, a few out-of-context quotes and maybe a rough plot.
I'll get my ticket, I'll see the movie, I'll be disappointed, and, you know, whatever. And so will you.
-- ---
Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
Re:lowered expectations
by
dema
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
I'll get my ticket, I'll see the movie, I'll be disappointed, and, you know, whatever. And so will you.
I sure won't. I got my ticket, saw Episode I, was dissapointed, didn't buy the DVD, and haven't seen Episode II. If you don't want people like Lucas to pull crap like this, why do you pay to see movies you know won't live up to your expectations?
Re:lowered expectations
by
Dutchmaan
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Episode 2 is worth renting to see Yoda get busy with a lightsaber.
Maybe it's just me, but it didn't really sit right with me that Yoda, "got busy" with the lightsaber. First of all getting all acrobatic just isn't his style.. not to mention hopping around like a mexican jumping bean.
Yoda is calm and reserved with great mental control. IMHO Yoda should have fought with a completely defensive style... Dooku.. (or whatever his name was) should have been fighting Yoda in vain...
Just like the emporer on the dark side, Yoda should be "beyond the light saber". I suppose it could be argued that this was taking place at an earlier time when Yoda was less disciplined... but Yoda IMO is to the light side what the emporer is to the dark..
You would never have seen Palpatine pick up a light saber.. he's more into manipulating people to do his bidding. Yoda is more about cultivating the light side in the people around him.
Two sides of the same coin.
i'm holding out hope
by
aoasus
·
· Score: 1, Insightful
I'm really hoping that Lucas has listned to the critics and will make this one a lot less for the kiddies than the last two.
He's really come to rely upon the whiz-bang way too much and left a lot of the storytelling out. The money has gone to his head and at this point it's less about the film itself and more about the marketing opportunites. What he fails to realize is that the average movie going audience is vastly different today than they were in the late 70's. I can see better special effects anywhere, but a compelling story?
At least there are no photos of Jar-Jar.
Re:Google cache version
by
SpaFF
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· Score: 2, Insightful
Well that doesn't do us much good since the google cache doesn't include the pics...
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Version: 3.12
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O- M+ V PS+ P
Re:Slashdotted! Why are you guys clicking on the l
by
AceCaseOR
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
True, but Star Wars-bashing (and especially prequel-bashing), tends to take a large volume of posts, and often gets modded up.
-- Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Re:Slashdotted! Why are you guys clicking on the l
by
east+coast
·
· Score: 3, Insightful
Seriously, Slashdot keeps trashing the prequels, saying you'll never see them coz they suck, yada yada yada...
The Slashdot community is fairly large. The number of bashes vs. the number of people who keep quiet is really high. Not to say that every user of SD sits on either side of the fence but it's not what it appears to be. It's like the LA riots years ago; the news never reported that 18 million or so LA residents didn't riot. You only seen those who did.
and yet that site got slashdotted quicker than lightspeed.
I'm sure this access to the site isn't a slashdot only type of deal. These previews are going to cause a buzz elsewhere.
Do you genuinely dislike them, or s it just some kind of slashdot groupthink conformity that makes you bash something you don't have to see if you don't want to?
I personally don't like them, just my two cents. Why do you bash the bashers? You don't have to read our comments just as we don't have to see the new films. The door swings both ways.
Now, I'm not defending George Lucas
I think that defending Lucas at this point is even beyond the powers of the Jedi.
Your comparison might be a little more apt if it were Lucas's kids or some other person that were doing the newer movies, but it isn't... it's Lucas himself, the _SAME PERSON_ that invented Star Wars in the first place.
And this, class, is a form of what we call a "strawman". You see, the grandparent post was referring to George Lucas having the right to make Star Wars movies how he wants. Parent, on the other hand, is putting forward a strawman (creating a position and attacking it), by putting forward the analogy of a the decendant of the creator of a work of art changing of a series his ancestor created. There is a difference.
-- Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Re:It's a good thing they got slashdotted...
by
sjaskow
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Um, they are "leaked", here but it's definitely not a work-safe page.:)
Re:Movies - mod parent down!
by
charlesbakerharris
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· Score: 2, Insightful
No, the parent comment doesn't hold up. If there is widespread agreement that the movies sucked, and that the original 3 movies were far better, than it's grandparent-poster's right to call it a disgrace.
Did parent somehow think that "disgrace" was anything but a person's opinion? Or that the grandparent somehow didn't know that they could not watch the movie if they didn't like it? That's like telling me that I need to "get real" because I don't like to eat bell peppers (I don't, really.) Of course it's his opinion - pointing that out didn't add anything to the discussion. He's far from alone in his opinion, and he has a right to post it without being told to "get real" by someone who posts a canned, tired response.
Sure, Lucas can take the franchise in any direction he wants. In the minds of an large number of people, he took it in a sappy, thinly-plotted, clumsily scripted direction, marked by brilliant special effects, uneasy scenes, mediocre editing, and some poor acting from otherwise-usually-good actors. Lucas has the freedom to do this because he knows he has a franchise that will sell no matter what; it's just too bad that he did it in this fashion. (Yes, parent, this is my opinion. You need not point that out.)
Parent's arguments are specious and scarcely relevant; mod accordingly.
Warning: here (may) be spoilers.
by
Yaztromo
·
· Score: 4, Insightful
Okay -- I don't have any special inside information or anything, but I have been watching the commentary on the new Star Wars DVDs this past week, and after looking at these pictures have some thoughts to share.
Many of these pictures look to be of the type that are taken for marketing purposes, and at least one of them looks to be unfinished. Take a look at the pictures of General Grevious (sp? -- the robot with the lightsabres). All computer generated of course, with what you'd expect a lightsabre to look like. Now take a look at the shot of Darth Sideous/Anakin, in particular their sabres. Note they are just coloured poles -- no "glow". It would appear that these photos haven't gone through post processing yet, as I can't imagine Lucasfilm's marketing department releasing them that way.
This is important, as it's a vector upon which Lucasfilm will probably focus to try to track the source of the leak. Expect someone to get sacked. Some of the photos are obviously unfinished, and it won't be hard to get a list of people who have access to the originals.
Now I'm going to hypothesize about a few things here which, if correct, may turn out to be spoilers. Or they might be worth less than the electrons used to transmit this message. You've been warned. If you don't want to risk potentially reading about something that happens in the film, stop reading here.
With that out of the way, the other photos I find interesting are the ones of the Emperor in the background with Anakin and Darth Tyrannus in a lightsabre duel. It appears to be shades of Eps 6 (Return of the Jedi), with Luke facing off against Vader. In this case, however, I'm presuming that Anakin wins (looking at one photo, apparently by cutting off both Tyrannus' hands, again much like Eps. 6). Thus, it appears to be somewhat of a redux of Return of the Jedi, but with the difference that where Luke wouldn't turn towards the dark side, Anakin (obviously) did.
Which brings up a few interesting questions. Apparently Lucas is going with the whole concept that there can never be any more than two Sith at any given time -- a student and a master. And that as the student gets older, Sideous/Palpatine gets an up-and-coming Jedi to kill them off for him, becoming the new "student" in the process. This could put the whole duel in ROTJ in a new light.
It also adds some new evidence to something I've long wondered about in the prequels, having to do with Anakin being the one prophisized to "bring balance to the Force". Qui-gon, Yoda, and the other Jedi appear to have made the assumption that this can only be a positive thing. However, look at those who are the masters of the Force. There are at least a dozen (or more) Jedi, but only ever two Sith at any given time. If the Force is out of balance, it would appear to be in favour of the "light" side, in which case the imbalance is a good thing. To bring balance to the Force could entail equalizing those who are its masters. If Anakin kills Tyrannus, that leaves two Sith. And from the original trilogy, we know after Eps 3 there are only two Jedi left (Obi-wan and Yoda). Perfectly balanced.
It's good to see Kit Fisto makes another showing, at least:).
... Lucas has decided that special effects should be the focus of the story, instead of the story. The originals were groundbreaking in their look, but also magnificently told a story.
I agree. I've said many times before that the orginal movies told a great story against a scifi backdrop. And the new movies tell a so-so story against a great scifi backdrop.
Also in the orginals, there was build up and then an action scene. Then more build up and another action scene. They were paced like that. Contrast that to Esp. I. Almost the whole movie was build up. Then at the end there is several battles going on at once.
-- Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
That doesn't even make any sense. The ratings do not indicate the quality of the movies. Jar Jar was abominable, the reliance on CGI (which is not as natural, even, than stop-motion) was a mistake, and the story was not as complex (by the time you get to Ep. IV, there's already three episodes of back story. But at Ep. I, there really isn't much at all).
The movie wasn't targeted at kids (no more so than anyone else), but it was *about* a kid, and *that* was the biggest problem Lucas faced with Ep. I. It's *really* hard to make a movie about a kid that isn't childish. If he acted just like a little boy, it would have been boring, so they had to make him a pod-racing, star fighter-flying top gun war hero, which was *really* asking a lot of the audience. I would have made the film primarily about the Jedi, the Sith, and the Republic, with the rise of Anakin as a minor role, but Lucas wanted it to be primarily about Anakin. Oops.
Had Ep. II been released as Ep. I, things would have been a lot better.
That has just summed up what I think about episodes 1 and 2.
We were kids when we watched the original Star Wars episodes. We didn't expect much of a movie, and the bad animations and bad acting were not problems then. In ep. 1, we have great CG graphics and all the bad acting, but now it seems to bother us. Guess what, we're grown ups now.
I, too watched Episode 1 with my 2 nephews (5 and 6 yo at the time), and they thought it was awesome too.
People just seem to take bashing at Lucas as a sport. He did episodes 4-6 for money too, didn't he?
Re:The real revenge of the Sith
by
I7D
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
Look, my view of Star-Wars is that its really cool and I enjoyed every single movie, probably because i'm not such a die-hard fan. I got angry about the Han shooting second thing only because everybody else did.
That said, the most die hard fan to the most passive fan will go see this movie, theres no stopping it. Its like gasoline. We hate to pay for it, know its a waste of money, but we neeed it.
-- Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
Re:Found you!
by
kin_korn_karn
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
From watching countless movies over the years I've come to the conclusion that actors need to be inspired by a good screenplay more than by direction. No matter who they're working for, no actor looks or feels like a genius when uttering lines or going through plot motions that would make George Lucas look like Tennessee Williams.
on the contrary
by
WotanKhan
·
· Score: 2, Insightful
The success of the original trilogy (and I mean their quality as well as commercial) is largely a result of the talented people Lucas assembled to make them. Not the least was the work of the then relatively unknown Harrison Ford, and of the masters Sir Alec Guinness, Peter Cushing (as Tarkin) and the voice work of James Earl Jones. I thought Anthony Daniels as C-3PO was believable and humorous. The rest of the cast was quite adequate to the task.
I don't fault the actors for their performances in the new trilogy, except perhaps Hayden Christianson. It was truly disheartening to watch the valiant effort made by Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor to bring some life to a truly abysmal script, only to be deliberately upstaged at every turn by a megalomaniac director and his hideous cgi.
Slashdot Mirror
"Episode III: The last chance for Lucas".
Seriously...is anyone going into this thing with high hopes? Episode I was like watching my childhood melt into easily-marketable claptrap, and Episode II felt like the actors had full-body botox.
Who is going to see this expecting a wonderful, rounded, well-acted movie? Don't get me wrong, I intend to see it, but mostly because of morbid curiosity.
I dunno...I guess I'm still bitter about LucasArts cancelling Sam and Max for more Star Wars Title. Damn them!
Personally after the HHGG (Zaphod's second head is up his nose) and Zeta Gundam (A real Gundam is being made for a movie! Here's some pictures which are infact a 1/2 scale Gundam model been around for 10 years!), incidents. I think I'll hold off on any "leaked" or "hot new news" untill it's been comfirmed by a source I trust.
I like muppets.
Get real.
The movies are what created the franchise in the first place, and Lucas can take the movies _AND_ the franchise in whatever direction he wants.
I think what you mean is that the first two episodes are a disgrace to _YOUR_ impression of what Star Wars is supposed to be. But this isn't your movie, it's Lucas's. If you don't like it, don't watch it.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
Saw these pics this morning...they look good.
Which pretty much sums up my expectations: it looks neat from the previews, and probably will disappoint me in the end. I was in line at Blockbuster with my girlfriend the other night, looking at recent releases, and noting how many of them had excellent trailers, and how many of them actually turned out to be worth watching. Almost anything looks good when your interaction with it consists of a trailer, some stills, a few out-of-context quotes and maybe a rough plot.
I'll get my ticket, I'll see the movie, I'll be disappointed, and, you know, whatever. And so will you.
--- Where's my car, and why are these grass stains on my pants?
I'm really hoping that Lucas has listned to the critics and will make this one a lot less for the kiddies than the last two. He's really come to rely upon the whiz-bang way too much and left a lot of the storytelling out. The money has gone to his head and at this point it's less about the film itself and more about the marketing opportunites. What he fails to realize is that the average movie going audience is vastly different today than they were in the late 70's. I can see better special effects anywhere, but a compelling story? At least there are no photos of Jar-Jar.
Well that doesn't do us much good since the google cache doesn't include the pics...
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True, but Star Wars-bashing (and especially prequel-bashing), tends to take a large volume of posts, and often gets modded up.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Seriously, Slashdot keeps trashing the prequels, saying you'll never see them coz they suck, yada yada yada...
The Slashdot community is fairly large. The number of bashes vs. the number of people who keep quiet is really high. Not to say that every user of SD sits on either side of the fence but it's not what it appears to be. It's like the LA riots years ago; the news never reported that 18 million or so LA residents didn't riot. You only seen those who did.
and yet that site got slashdotted quicker than lightspeed.
I'm sure this access to the site isn't a slashdot only type of deal. These previews are going to cause a buzz elsewhere.
Do you genuinely dislike them, or s it just some kind of slashdot groupthink conformity that makes you bash something you don't have to see if you don't want to?
I personally don't like them, just my two cents. Why do you bash the bashers? You don't have to read our comments just as we don't have to see the new films. The door swings both ways.
Now, I'm not defending George Lucas
I think that defending Lucas at this point is even beyond the powers of the Jedi.
But hey, this is Slashdot. Continue your bashing.
Thanks for the permission.
Dedicated Cthulhu Cultist since 4523 BC.
Your comparison might be a little more apt if it were Lucas's kids or some other person that were doing the newer movies, but it isn't... it's Lucas himself, the _SAME PERSON_ that invented Star Wars in the first place.
File under 'M' for 'Manic ranting'
And this, class, is a form of what we call a "strawman". You see, the grandparent post was referring to George Lucas having the right to make Star Wars movies how he wants. Parent, on the other hand, is putting forward a strawman (creating a position and attacking it), by putting forward the analogy of a the decendant of the creator of a work of art changing of a series his ancestor created. There is a difference.
Zagreus sits inside your head, Zagreus lives among the dead, Zagreus sees you in your bed and eats you in your sleep.
Um, they are "leaked", here but it's definitely not a work-safe page. :)
Did parent somehow think that "disgrace" was anything but a person's opinion? Or that the grandparent somehow didn't know that they could not watch the movie if they didn't like it? That's like telling me that I need to "get real" because I don't like to eat bell peppers (I don't, really.) Of course it's his opinion - pointing that out didn't add anything to the discussion. He's far from alone in his opinion, and he has a right to post it without being told to "get real" by someone who posts a canned, tired response.
Sure, Lucas can take the franchise in any direction he wants. In the minds of an large number of people, he took it in a sappy, thinly-plotted, clumsily scripted direction, marked by brilliant special effects, uneasy scenes, mediocre editing, and some poor acting from otherwise-usually-good actors. Lucas has the freedom to do this because he knows he has a franchise that will sell no matter what; it's just too bad that he did it in this fashion. (Yes, parent, this is my opinion. You need not point that out.)
Parent's arguments are specious and scarcely relevant; mod accordingly.
Okay -- I don't have any special inside information or anything, but I have been watching the commentary on the new Star Wars DVDs this past week, and after looking at these pictures have some thoughts to share.
Many of these pictures look to be of the type that are taken for marketing purposes, and at least one of them looks to be unfinished. Take a look at the pictures of General Grevious (sp? -- the robot with the lightsabres). All computer generated of course, with what you'd expect a lightsabre to look like. Now take a look at the shot of Darth Sideous/Anakin, in particular their sabres. Note they are just coloured poles -- no "glow". It would appear that these photos haven't gone through post processing yet, as I can't imagine Lucasfilm's marketing department releasing them that way.
This is important, as it's a vector upon which Lucasfilm will probably focus to try to track the source of the leak. Expect someone to get sacked. Some of the photos are obviously unfinished, and it won't be hard to get a list of people who have access to the originals.
Now I'm going to hypothesize about a few things here which, if correct, may turn out to be spoilers. Or they might be worth less than the electrons used to transmit this message. You've been warned. If you don't want to risk potentially reading about something that happens in the film, stop reading here.
With that out of the way, the other photos I find interesting are the ones of the Emperor in the background with Anakin and Darth Tyrannus in a lightsabre duel. It appears to be shades of Eps 6 (Return of the Jedi), with Luke facing off against Vader. In this case, however, I'm presuming that Anakin wins (looking at one photo, apparently by cutting off both Tyrannus' hands, again much like Eps. 6). Thus, it appears to be somewhat of a redux of Return of the Jedi, but with the difference that where Luke wouldn't turn towards the dark side, Anakin (obviously) did.
Which brings up a few interesting questions. Apparently Lucas is going with the whole concept that there can never be any more than two Sith at any given time -- a student and a master. And that as the student gets older, Sideous/Palpatine gets an up-and-coming Jedi to kill them off for him, becoming the new "student" in the process. This could put the whole duel in ROTJ in a new light.
It also adds some new evidence to something I've long wondered about in the prequels, having to do with Anakin being the one prophisized to "bring balance to the Force". Qui-gon, Yoda, and the other Jedi appear to have made the assumption that this can only be a positive thing. However, look at those who are the masters of the Force. There are at least a dozen (or more) Jedi, but only ever two Sith at any given time. If the Force is out of balance, it would appear to be in favour of the "light" side, in which case the imbalance is a good thing. To bring balance to the Force could entail equalizing those who are its masters. If Anakin kills Tyrannus, that leaves two Sith. And from the original trilogy, we know after Eps 3 there are only two Jedi left (Obi-wan and Yoda). Perfectly balanced.
It's good to see Kit Fisto makes another showing, at least :).
Yaz.
... Lucas has decided that special effects should be the focus of the story, instead of the story. The originals were groundbreaking in their look, but also magnificently told a story.
I agree. I've said many times before that the orginal movies told a great story against a scifi backdrop. And the new movies tell a so-so story against a great scifi backdrop.
Also in the orginals, there was build up and then an action scene. Then more build up and another action scene. They were paced like that. Contrast that to Esp. I. Almost the whole movie was build up. Then at the end there is several battles going on at once.
Coder's Stone: The programming language quick ref for iPad
That doesn't even make any sense. The ratings do not indicate the quality of the movies. Jar Jar was abominable, the reliance on CGI (which is not as natural, even, than stop-motion) was a mistake, and the story was not as complex (by the time you get to Ep. IV, there's already three episodes of back story. But at Ep. I, there really isn't much at all).
The movie wasn't targeted at kids (no more so than anyone else), but it was *about* a kid, and *that* was the biggest problem Lucas faced with Ep. I. It's *really* hard to make a movie about a kid that isn't childish. If he acted just like a little boy, it would have been boring, so they had to make him a pod-racing, star fighter-flying top gun war hero, which was *really* asking a lot of the audience. I would have made the film primarily about the Jedi, the Sith, and the Republic, with the rise of Anakin as a minor role, but Lucas wanted it to be primarily about Anakin. Oops.
Had Ep. II been released as Ep. I, things would have been a lot better.
That has just summed up what I think about episodes 1 and 2.
We were kids when we watched the original Star Wars episodes. We didn't expect much of a movie, and the bad animations and bad acting were not problems then. In ep. 1, we have great CG graphics and all the bad acting, but now it seems to bother us. Guess what, we're grown ups now.
I, too watched Episode 1 with my 2 nephews (5 and 6 yo at the time), and they thought it was awesome too.
People just seem to take bashing at Lucas as a sport. He did episodes 4-6 for money too, didn't he?
Look, my view of Star-Wars is that its really cool and I enjoyed every single movie, probably because i'm not such a die-hard fan. I got angry about the Han shooting second thing only because everybody else did. That said, the most die hard fan to the most passive fan will go see this movie, theres no stopping it. Its like gasoline. We hate to pay for it, know its a waste of money, but we neeed it.
Neil is that you? Yeah yeah, it's me... Neil...
From watching countless movies over the years I've come to the conclusion that actors need to be inspired by a good screenplay more than by direction. No matter who they're working for, no actor looks or feels like a genius when uttering lines or going through plot motions that would make George Lucas look like Tennessee Williams.
I don't fault the actors for their performances in the new trilogy, except perhaps Hayden Christianson. It was truly disheartening to watch the valiant effort made by Liam Neeson and Ewan McGregor to bring some life to a truly abysmal script, only to be deliberately upstaged at every turn by a megalomaniac director and his hideous cgi.